"When
all is said
and done,
this is an honest account of British Captain
Scott's doomed second
expedition
to the inhospitable South Pole."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Historical film, in lush TechniColor, crisply
directed by
Charles
Frend ("The Big Blockade"/"Johnny Frenchman"/ "The
Cruel Sea") as if a
docudrama, that is done so low-key and so British that
it was perhaps
robbed
of its inherent drama of the determined efforts of the
brave explorers
that ended in tragic failure and stunned England. The
film was based on
Captain Robert Falcon Scott's log, that stated: "Had
we lived I should
have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance
and courage of my
companions,
which would have stirred the heart of every
Englishman. It seems a
pity,
but I don’t think I can write more. These rough notes
and our bodies
must
tell the tale…. For God’s sake, look after our
people").

It's accurately written (more or less) by Walter
Meade,
Ivor Montagu
and Mary Hayley Bell, who do a fine job capturing the
feel of the
Edwardian
period and the downbeat part of the saga. The
stiff-upper-lip ill-fated
1912 adventure story should have been more stirring
considering its
daredevil
nature, but the understated performances were sincere,
the snowscapes
(shot
in Ealing Studio, Norway, the Swiss Alps and South
Pole) were visually
appealing (even the fake snowscapes) and Vaughan
Williams' rousing
score
gave the film the excitement the story at times
couldn't give it. When
all is said and done, this is an honest account of
British Captain
Scott's
doomed second expedition to the inhospitable South
Pole, an unexplored
continent that Scott hoped he would be the first to
explore for
country,
fame and science. Scott's previous expedition to the
South Pole was in
1904, where he came within 90 miles of it.

The film opensshowing Scott (John Mills)
desperately roaming
around Edwardian England for private and government
financing for his
arctic
expedition and also recruiting a crew. The exploration
began in 1910
and
took two years to reach the South Pole. Upon reaching
it in 1912, Scott
was dismayed to find the Norwegian flag planted there
by explorer Roald
Amundsen. Returning to England, Scott's party of five
men all perished
in the snow.

A search party several months later would find the
Scott
diaries
and pieced together the story that Edwardian England
found stirring as
an example of gallantry and courage by a small band of
dedicated heroic
men fighting impossible odds. The film tried to
capture the highlights
of this story, which it did except for the part of
making it exciting.
Too many of the characters could not be fleshed out
for dramatic
purposes,
but the film comes through with a very touching
finale.

The last shot is where the diary was found and on a
cross
that marked
that place in the frozen wilderness were the words:
"To strive, to
seek,
to find, and not to yield."